On opening my car door outside Vanguard Foundry, the aroma of hot sand and iron took me back to the 1960s, in one of my first 'moves' as an Austin Apprentice to the Foundry at Longbridge. In particular, there was an evocative 'tang' of resin-bound cores a technology that was just coming into use at the time. Regrettably, like Longbridge itself, many British foundries have closed down as the manufacturing sector has declined. So, what lay behind the success of Vanguard Foundry, which was not merely surviving, but actively expanding its business, with turnover up from £2m to £6m in the past four years?

The answers came from Sales Director (and busy Sales Department of one!) Wayne Moseley, who joined Vanguard in 2003. “Vanguard, which started in 1983, is a private company that is able to act quickly on decisions, and respond to market changes. The most important part of our structured and bold business plan is the whole-hearted recognition that we are now in a global business. We have to engage with customers across the world, in all kinds of industry, and we find that there are many opportunities for a foundry like Vanguard that combines expertise and flexibility.” Currently around 80%of Vanguard Foundry output goes

to the automotive sector, though business is developing in many other areas such as defence and agriculture.

Vanguard's major speciality is in SiMo or Ni-resist castings for high-temperature applications such as turbocharger housings and exhaust manifolds. Key customers here are Holset, Borg Warner and Honeywell, and the turbocharger sizes vary from the 'handful' - suiting a 2-litre diesel, to the 'armful' for really big Marine diesel jobs. But Wayne is open to all kinds of customer; on the floor in their conference room was a batch of three handsome thin-wall cylindrical castings, each about the size of a bucket, for a Dutch heat exchanger manufacturer. “We won that business partly because the customer was so impressed that our website had a Dutch language option, in addition to English, German, French and Italian.” Wayne backs up this cosmopolitan website by making one 'export trip' each month, whether to an overseas trade show or to visit an individual prospective customer. “We supply to customers in the most demanding markets of Japan and the USA and if you can hack it there, you can do it anywhere.” Wayne's diary includes visits to Spain, Holland and Sweden in the near future